Looking At It From A Different Perspective
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Eric Cartman looks at himself in the mirror, except he doesn't really recognize himself. This is a oneshot about the inner workings of the mind of South Park's most infamous sociopath. Dark humor and ideologically broken because, well, this is Cartman.


**_THE VIEWS IN THIS FIC DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE AUTHOR. I JUST WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT WHAT I THINK IT'S LIKE IN CARTMAN'S HEAD._**_ I guess this is a drabble 'cause I wrote it in one sitting for fun. It's a standalone that can be seen as a partner to my other fic The Moral Ascencion of Kenny McCormick, but it doesn't have to be. This references the episodes where Cartman gets Kenny's eyes and the one where Cartman starts buying and selling stuff for Stem Cell research- if you've seen 'em, you know which ones I'm talking about. If not... I apologize, I don't remember the names of them! But this thing draws mostly on canon events because that's how I roll._

_Thank you for reading and please leave a review- or point out any typos or places where my repetitive syntax and mechanics is a hindrance rather than a successful device! Thank you!_

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**_Looking From A Different Perspective_**

He looked in the mirror- immaculately orderly and clean, just like everything else in the room save for his messy bedhead.

Eric lazily addressed this issue with his fingers until he had to resort to using his comb to tame the unruly chocolate fluff on his head- his hair wasn't going to comb itself, and he knew it. If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself- that was his motto… well, it was one of his lesser-known personal beliefs, at least.

Screw it. His hair wasn't worth the effort- he'd just slap a hat on it. He called his mother and asked her (told her, ordered her) to bring him his blue and yellow cap.

If you want something done right, do it yourself. But if you don't give a shit about things being done right, why not make someone else do it for you? Furthermore, why do something that you can make others do for you? It was so simple, but nobody really got it. Kyle even yelled at him for it.

Clever Kyle with his indignant pride in how he always had the answers. Oh, sure, Kyle was a self-hating Jew sometimes, and he had crises of faith like everyone else. But there was still pride in his defense of his heritage, pride in his family, and pride in how he always believed that he was always so _right_.

Well, pride in that he believed he had a _semblance _of morality, at least.

Eric didn't have that kind of pride, not really. Nor that kind of morality, according to Kyle.

And yet when he explained how he saw the world to others, took the time to lead them by the nose to find the real conclusion, _his _conclusion, think about it right, _do it right_, do all that _himself_, Eric could see the conventions of society crumble before his listener's eyes like the graham cracker crust on his mother's homemade s'more pies. The idea of right and wrong were tools he used to get what he wanted. People like Kyle just decided to put them on pedestals and let them rule their lives instead of utilize them. That's all the difference there was.

But Eric knew about rights. He knew he had the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If selling fetuses or oppressing others or parading the streets like Hitler were his pursuit of happiness, how was he doing anything wrong? Because he was performing acts of hate speech? What about his first Amendment rights? Freedom of speech protected hate speech. Was it because he was endangering lives- or killing babies? Why? People were still fighting over the validity of a fetus as being a living creature.

Eric didn't actually have an opinion on that one, either- he and the masses as a whole were in agreement over the fact that fetuses were still in an area of meddlesome grey. But it didn't matter, anyway, because Eric still saw them as fair game.

If they weren't decidedly alive, nobody would've cared.

If they _were_ decidedly alive, America would be upset because killing was "wrong" and "not Christian".

But didn't his government give him freedom from religious persecution? Could he not argue that the use of fetuses was only wrong to those who truly believed? He may have gone to church, but Eric had hardly subscribed to anything like faith. And if the government, his supposed defender, still deemed killing wrong because it "just _was_" like Kyle, or because it "_said_ so" like his mother when she wanted to justify some bogus command that kept him out of the house so she could have a "male visitor", couldn't he _then _use religion as the thing that protected his fetus-usage? That he was doing it because his religion (he could make up a religion lickety-split! That's what Joseph Smith appeared to have done. It's what L. Ron Hubbard appeared to have done. Hell, it's what the Jews, Jesus, and Mohammed and Siddhartha and Lao Tzu appeared to have done, too. And whoever came up with Shinto- for all Eric knew and for all anyone could prove, all religions were pulled out of someone's ass for all the "right" reasons. As if that _meant_ anything) demanded it? How, on paper, were any of his actions questionable? He just didn't get how others didn't get it. It was as brilliant as it was pigheaded.

Such was the logic of Eric Cartman.

He pulled out his toothbrush and toothpaste and went to work on his teeth, giving them a more precise thrice-over than most people would have expected of him.

But why was that so surprising? Because Eric was fat? Because he was callous? Because they believed he was lazy (and, for the most part, was?) Probably. But he had made it a part of him. Appearance was everything and if this one was working for him, working to make others underestimate him until his plans came to fruition, why change it? He was hated this way. Feared this way. Sure, he could be kind and polite and better and stronger and faster, but what would that make him then?

He was fat, loud, obnoxious, racist, hypocritical, bigoted, sexist, hateful and hateable. But it wasn't like anything else made him special. And he knew it.

He _desperately_ wanted (needed) to be special. Since he was the one who mattered most in this world (and why shouldn't he? Only a moron would fail to look out for themselves.)

So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Good, old-fashioned conventional wisdom. A long time ago, somebody understood what Eric had spent his whole life learning. People had sure gotten ignorant in the interim between the saying's creation and Eric's birth.

Because, you know, logically, Eric had been a fetus before he had been a baby.

You'd think that simple fact would make him think twice about using stem cells for stupid things like making new restaurant copies, but it didn't. ("Stupid?" Eric would scoff- "We need to eat to live, don't we? Burgers are a basic fucking need… if you want to survive!")

Wants and needs. Also interchangeable. You _need _burgers if you _want_ to survive. Others would say, "You _need_ to survive and you _want_ burgers." This is true, but there was so much more to that for Eric. He _needed_ burgers to _want_ to survive.

He _needed_ _things _to _want_ to survive.

He _needed to not be bored_ to _want_ to survive.

He _needed what he wanted_ to _want_ to _need _to survive and feel _special_.

Otherwise it just wasn't worth it.

Duh.

And why would he want to survive? Because he said so? Because he just did? No, it was simpler than that- so simple that it was the only reason as to why _anything_ happened to anyone, _ever_ that Eric was consciously aware of.

Why _not_?

He had the things he needed to get the things he wanted, so why throw it all away? That just wouldn't make sense. So he kept wanting more.

It was a vicious cycle that would eventually work its way to eat away at him, like an Ouroboros gnawing too fast at its tail. Not that he understood the parallel between that and himself- why would a snake be so stupid as to bite its own tail? "Lookit this, you guys! It's so stupid! Ha ha! Oh! Oh! Look- it doesn't even realize why it's hurting! You guys! Isn't that hilarious?"

Groggily, he spat out his toothpaste, rinsed, and stared bleary-eyed into the mirror.

Mackey was always telling him to "try to look at the world from a different perspective, m'kay. Try and see things through someone else's eyes" and every time, Eric always sneered.

Because he was seeing things from a different perspective. He always was, and not just in the whole argument of "right" and "wrong" and "want" and "need".

The eyes in the mirror- the same ones in Eric's face- belonged to his friend Kenny McCormick and they saw things like life and death as everyday occurrences. Perfectly ordinary. Shitty. Dull. Nothing to get so worked up over-if it didn't involve something Eric cared about, it was practically unmemorable.

They saw a lot of memorable injustices, too, but they couldn't (or rather, didn't) do anything about them besides bear witness to the whole of Eric's life from nine years old and onwards. Eric was seeing the world through someone else's transplanted organs, but he was still the one seeing.

He and Kenny. Both so poor, both so eager to get what they needed to want to keep on surviving. The vigilante was so enviably heroic, so apparently perfect, but Eric knew that Kenny wasn't any "better" or "worse" than any other kid in South Park, including Eric. (But he had to grudgingly admit that Mysterion was a hell of a lot _cooler_ than every other kid in South Park.)He could see it reflected in Kenny's eyes- the anger, the boredom, the façade of conviction (so, so like Kyle… and like someone else he couldn't visualize, someone simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar all at once) that there was nothing wrong or nebulous about who he was or what he was doing._ There is nothing wrong with me._

So forget Mackey. Eric knew how to look at things from someone else's perspective better than anyone he knew. He'd been using someone else's eyes for so long that he practically couldn't remember the last time that he'd actually been able to look at himself, unshrouded and laid bare to show him as he really was. No, Kenny was the hollow-eyed individual he found staring back at him in the mirror. A stranger. Not Eric. Eric hadn't actually faced himself for a very long time.

And he wasn't even sure he wanted to if he could. He was a little afraid- afraid that he was really just the Kenny in the mirror, afraid that he _wasn't_- he was afraid of what he might see.

"Mom! Where's my hat, dammit!"

But only a little.


End file.
